20 Magic Words to Say at Work

June 9, 2014

12:00 pm

0 Shares

In movies, magic words open secret doors, get genies to grant you wishes, and transport you to faraways lands. Words might not have quite as much power in the real world, but they come close.

Do you ever feel like you can’t get through to your team, and everyone seems to be resentful, defensive, or put-upon? In her book Daring Greatly, researcher Brené Brown lists a series of key phrases that help people connect with each other from a place of trust and honesty.

These phrases may make you feel vulnerable, but that’s the point. To succeed, we need to be willing to take a risk and put our thoughts and feelings on the line. This is the exact opposite of a shame culture, which I wrote about on Thursday. If you can say one of these things to a team member who is antagonistic to you, you might just feel their defenses melt away – like a linguistic karate chop.

Even by the relentless standards of tech innovation, 2018 has been quite the year. We’ve seen some incredible products launched in the past 12 months, from awesome laptops to must-have tablets, lust-worthy phones to brilliant fitness devices. We round up the best tech of the ...

Parenting in the internet age is tough. And Facebook's track record with how it treats younger users should be enough to concern any parent. This week alone, Facebook was found to be paying teenage users for access to their data, and its track record is little better.

With the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas in full swing, many manufacturers are hoping to hit the headlines with a bang, but for the makers of Promobot, an autnomous robot designed for business, this happened quite literally when one of its fleet was taken out by a Tesla.

Kira M. Newman is a Tech Cocktail writer interested in the harsh reality of entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and psychology. She is the founder of The Year of Happy and has been traveling around the world interviewing entrepreneurs in Asia, Europe, and North America since 2011. Follow her @kiramnewman or contact kira@tech.co.